Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 10:08:17 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> To: doc@FreeBSD.org Cc: adrian@FreeBSD.org, dcs@FreeBSD.org Subject: Patch for features.sgml Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1010106095747.16031A-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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Well, I finally got sick of seeing the old features page pop up whenever I
pointed people to www.FreeBSD.org, so Adrian, Daniel, and I put together
the following patch. It probably has non-ideal SGML, and other things
could be added, but I figured it was a starting point. As such, I'm
looking for a bored docs committer who feels like taking this one the rest
of the way to commit-land :-).
Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Project
robert@fledge.watson.org NAI Labs, Safeport Network Services
Index: features.sgml
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/ncvs/www/en/features.sgml,v
retrieving revision 1.13
diff -u -r1.13 features.sgml
--- features.sgml 2000/04/03 10:42:51 1.13
+++ features.sgml 2001/01/06 15:00:51
@@ -45,61 +45,42 @@
operating systems design to give you these advanced features:</p>
<ul>
- <li><b>Bounce buffering</b> gets around a limitation in the PC's ISA
- architecture that limits direct-memory access to the first 16
- megabytes.
-
- <p><i>Result:</i> systems with more than 16 megabytes operate more
- efficiently with DMA peripherals on the ISA bus.</p></li>
-
<li><b>A merged virtual memory and filesystem buffer cache</b>
continuously tunes the amount of memory used for programs and the
- disk cache.<p><i>Result:</i> programs receive both excellent memory
+ disk cache. As a result, programs receive both excellent memory
management and high performance disk access, and the system
- administrator is freed from the task of tuning cache sizes.</p></li>
+ administrator is freed from the task of tuning cache sizes.</li>
<li><b>Compatibility modules</b> enable programs for other operating
systems to run on FreeBSD, including programs for Linux, SCO,
- NetBSD, and BSDI.
+ NetBSD, and BSDI.</li>
- <p><i>Result:</i> users will not have to recompile programs
- already compiled for one of the compatible OS's, and will have
- access to a greater selection of off-the-shelf software, like the
- <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/FrontPage/">Microsoft FrontPage
- Server</a> extensions for BSDI or <a
- href="http://linux.corel.com/linux8/index.htm">WordPerfect</a>;
- for SCO.</p></li>
-
- <li><b>Dynamically loadable kernel modules</b> allows new filesystem
- types, networking protocols or binary emulators to be added to the
- kernel at runtime without having to generate a new kernel image.
-
- <p><i>Result:</i> Much time can be saved and 3rd party vendors can
- deliver complete subsystems as kernel modules without having to
- distribute source or have lengthy installation procedures.</p></li>
-
- <li><b>Shared libraries</b> reduce the size of programs, saving disk
- space and memory. FreeBSD uses an advanced shared library scheme
- which offers many of the advantages of ELF, and the current version
- offers ELF compatibility for both Linux and native FreeBSD
- programs.</li>
+ <li><b>Kernel Queues</b> allow programs to respond more efficiently
+ to a variety of asynchronous events including file and socket IO,
+ improving application and system performance.</li>
+
+ <li><b>Accept Filters</b> allow connection-intensive applications,
+ such as web servers, to cleanly push part of their functionality into
+ the operating system kernel, improving performance.</li>
+
+ <li><b>Soft Updates</b> allow improved file system performance
+ without sacrificing safety and reliability, by intelligently
+ analyzing, caching and rewriting or reordering disk meta-data
+ operations.</li>
+
+ <li><b>Support for IPsec and IPv6</b> allows improved security in
+ networks, and support for the next-generation Internet Protocol,
+ IPv6.</li>
+
</ul>
- <p>Naturally, since FreeBSD is an ongoing effort, you can expect newer
- features and higher levels of stability with each release.</p>
- </blockquote>
-
- <h2>What experts have to say . . .</h2>
-
- <blockquote>
- <p><i>``FreeBSD has an outline-structured visual configuration editor
- ... you can enter the configuration of every device the OS supports
- and can therefore get a successful installation on the first try
- almost every time. IBM, Microsoft, and others would do well to
- emulate FreeBSD's approach.''</i></p>
+ <p>Work in-progress includes support for fine-grained SMP locking in
+ kernel, allowing higher performance on multi-processor machines,
+ support for Scheduler Activations, allowing parallelism in threaded
+ programs, file system snapshots, fsck-free booting, network
+ optimizations such as zero-copy sockets and event-driven socket IO, ACPI support, and advanced security features such as Mandatory
+ Access Control.</p>
- <div align="right"><p>---Brett Glass, <i>Infoworld</i>, April 8
- 1996.</p></div>
</blockquote>
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